


holding back the flood

by johnny-and-dora (sian_jpg)



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Anxious Amy Santiago, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, One-Shot, amy and rosa's friendship is the best, i'm stressed and i'm coping by writing amy stressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 21:39:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16049075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian_jpg/pseuds/johnny-and-dora
Summary: "Oh God. Their baby is now the size of a cherry. She’s tearing up again."or, the one where jake and rosa take care of a extremely stressed, highly emotional and mildly pregnant amy.(future fic)





	holding back the flood

Amy really doesn’t know why she’s crying.

As a Santiago, she prides herself on having at least a reasonable amount of self control when it comes to emotional displays in the workplace; she was taught long ago that they were highly inappropriate, after all, and she takes great pride in being a teacher’s pet/star mentee.

Disregarding Holt’s advice (which isn’t something she often does), one of the thousands of things she’s learnt since she became a sergeant is that it’s optimum for everyone’s productivity – and overall physical wellbeing – if she can keep stress braids, Santiago-scale freak outs and full-on weeping to a minimum at work.

(No-one needs to mention the Great Printer Catastrophe again – and _absolutely_   no-one needs to mention that she’s permanently banned from being anywhere near the machine if it’s ever low on ink.)

Badly timed, apocalypse-inducing paper jams aside; Amy is a strong, emotionally resilient, rational woman. She rolls her eyes and smiles at Jake when he cries at films, she flawlessly multitasks with letting her anxiety get the best of her, and she tries her best to remain professional at all times (ignoring the _extremely_ few instances in which her husband has tempted her into Supply Closet C). She cries when she wants to, when she needs to, but as a rule, she absolutely holds it together at the precinct, especially in front of her officers.

At least, that’s what she’s been firmly trying to tell herself for the past few days, because her usually reliable ability to “hold it together” currently seems about as unstable as her current hormone levels.

Since she got into work this morning, she’s cried _four_ times already – once because they were out of granola, once because Charles’s lunch smelled at least ten million times worse and at least ten times more eye-watering than usual. Once, most unceremoniously, in a toilet stall on her break because her head wrecks and she’s so nauseous she can barely enjoy filling in paperwork anymore, and once because she suddenly remembered the sonogram picture, grainy and monochrome and forever universe-changing, that currently takes pride of place in their kitchen, stuck lovingly with an old I LOVE NY magnet to their fridge.

Notably - and most likely the shining, golden solve for why she might be spending 3pm on a Thursday afternoon sobbing her little heart out in the evidence lock up, riding out her own little hormone rollercoaster - Amy is nine weeks pregnant.

(Now is not the time, but something in her lights up every time she actually dares to think the actual word “pregnant” into existence; she fondly remembers snapshots of the past two months, the swell of joy in her heart at those two life-altering little lines, another test passed with flying colours. The look on Jake’s face when she told him, the way he’s been doing everything he can to take care of her. The time he came home with a little pair of baby sneakers that he “couldn’t resist” and she kissed him after lecturing him about how now wasn’t the time for frivolous purchases and they needed to be balancing their finances.)

(In short, they’re having a baby - and it’s terrifying and exhilarating and extremely, extremely nauseating, and she’s never been happier in her life.)

(And yet, she still can’t quite seem to stop crying.)

The emotional carnival ride of growing a human aside, she _really_ doesn’t want to have an emotional break-down here, of all places, the one place in the precinct that’s meant to keep her steady. Quite frankly, Amy does not have the time to spare for these gross, irritating emotions right now. There is no time reserved in her tightly packed schedule for emotions of any kind, let alone multiple confusing and upsetting ones all at once.

She can’t even really note anything currently worth crying over. It’s just a simple detailed and meticulously planned patrol schedule due by the end of her shift that’s proving slightly harder to organise than first anticipated. Easy. Not a problem that she hasn’t solved a thousand times before.

Of course, that’s also on top of the thirty slide presentation about increasing productivity and efficiency within the precinct she has to give tomorrow that she’s barely had the time or energy to actually prepare for. And the in-depth evaluations she has to hand in of her entire squad by Monday.

And the fact that she’s already behind on the research for her pregnancy binder, and she still hasn’t revised their monthly budgets - because once she finally gets home she’s too exhausted to do anything other than sleepily curl up on the couch next to her husband, using Jake as her personal space heater while he strokes her hair and tells her about his day. She’s even too tired to yell at the TV during Jeopardy.

It’s nothing. At least, it’s nothing she would usually be worried about, tasks to complete that she would normally even be a little _excited_ to feel the adrenaline rush of finishing early and getting some sweet spare time to revise her eighteen step plan to increase arrest numbers by 30% by December. Santiago-style.

 And yet, to pregnant Amy, what usually constitutes as ‘nothing’ seems to currently signal the end of days - and so, here she appears to be.

Hormones raging, freshly applied mascara once again ruined, eyes red and puffy, breathing irregular, neon sign brightly flashing with the words “hot mess” directly above her head. She’s hiding, not exactly inconspicuously,  between the endlessly neat rows of closed cases, knees hugged as close to her chest as possible while taking tremendous care not to squish the ever-so-slight, barely noticeable bump that remains breath-taking proof that she’s growing an actual, real-life, cherry sized (as Jake cheerfully informed her this morning over breakfast) human being inside of her.

Oh God. Their baby is now the size of a cherry. She’s tearing up again.

She decides after a while, with the shred of rationality Amy seems to have left, that she is currently a hot mess that only one person is fully equipped to deal with. She reaches for her phone, sniffling, trying her best keep her breathing steady, anxiously fiddling with the shining silver wedding band on her ring finger.

She’s about to text a _“Code Blue, Evidence Lockup”_ to Jake (who she thought she couldn’t love more up until about three weeks ago, when he woke her up at 3am with a meticulously crafted colour-based code system they could use to covertly deal with pregnancy situations - it made her both very emotional and super horny) – but she feels a flash of panic when it’s not in its usual place tucked safely in her back pocket. Her heart quickly sinks when she realises it must be still in the top drawer of her desk.

She lets out another stifled sob of dread and embarrassment and frustration and practically every range of negative emotion under the sun - which is, obviously, exactly when she hears the door to the evidence lock-up swing open.

 A spark of fear immediately ignites in her chest as her heart starts racing – _not now_. She instinctively squeezes her eyes shut, hoping desperately that if she makes herself as small as physically possible, even in her current state, she’ll be able to completely disappear.

The Nine-Nine have seen her in a much worse state, sure. She’s more sure than anything that her chosen family would be able to make her feel better in practically any kind of situation. And yet, pretty much her worst, world-ending, blood-pumping fear right now is anyone – except Jake, seeing as this is the job he kind of signed up for when he married her - having to deal with her like this.

 As weighted footsteps inch agonisingly closer, her heart plummets even further at the absence of the familiar sound of well worn sneakers – instead, she hears the equally familiar yet less comforting click-clack of black high-heeled boots on the cold concrete floor. She prepares for the worst.

The next thing she hears, deep yet uncharacteristically quiet and almost with a note of panic, is an unusually soft “Amy?” – when she finally opens her eyes, Rosa swims into view, eyes so comically wide that she can’t help but exhale a shaky, weak laugh. This is going to be fun.

“Heyyyyyyyy, Rosa.” She gives a little half-hearted wave despite herself, deciding to fully embrace the slightly hilarious and extremely mortifying situation.

(It could be worse. At least it’s less mortifying then being walked in on when making out with your boyfriend of one day, resulting in the heart attack and subsequent death of your new captain. Jake and Amy hold a lot of precinct records between them – the award for “highest amount of captains accidentally killed” is probably the one she’s least proud of.)

“Um, hey. Are you...”

“Chill? I’m chilled. I’m _to-tal-ly_ chill. Chilled.”

If possible, Rosa’s eyes get wider. 

“Do you possibly happen to know where my husband is, by any chance?” She laughs nervously with this sort of manic grin plastered on her face, putting all her energy into seeming like a normal human being. She’s failing miserably.

Rosa raises an eyebrow, but thankfully decides to indulge her.

“...He’s working on Charles’s B&E, some lame cheese shop downtown that Charles is too devastated about to get any actual police work done. They left like twenty minutes ago.” Amy exhales, trying not to let her face fall too hard.

“Right. Chill. Do you mind if I text him? I left my phone downstairs and I can’t exactly go down looking like...this.” She’s barely finished her sentence before Rosa is handing her phone to her, and she takes it gratefully.

She quickly finds Jake’s contact and involuntarily feels her lips tug up into a small smile at the incredibly unflattering dorky candid - from easily a decade ago, maybe even the Academy - that is his contact picture.

 (Some things never change. She’s very glad his hair has.)

**To: Jake Peralta, 15:06** _  
Hey babe, it’s Amy. Code Blue, Evidence Lockup. I know you’re with Charles so don’t drop everything and immediately rush back here, just come when you can. Using Rosa’s phone because I left mine downstairs. Love you x_

The painstaking minute and a half she takes to type out and send it to him – all while her hands are shaking from the incessant and deafening panic alarm sounding in her ribcage - are made even worse by the intense burning sensation of Rosa’s direct gaze on her the entire time. _Hold it together, Amy._

“Thank you.” She hands Rosa her phone back, wishing more than ever that if she concentrated hard enough she could just disappear from sight completely. An awkward silence descends over them both, bringing with it an inevitable thickness in the air not unlike the first warnings of a thunderstorm. It’s unbearable.

It’s not like they’re not close enough to talk about exactly why Amy is sobbing hysterically in the evidence lock-up at 3pm on a Thursday – far from it, in fact. Ever since Florida, Rosa has become more and more of a valued and surprisingly skilled confidante, even if most of her solutions to Amy’s problems are tequila and Nancy Meyers films. (It, somehow, always seems to work.)

If anything, Amy is desperate to tell one of her closest and best friends all about how nauseous she is and how stressed out she feels and how, by the way, she’s casually just in the early stages of growing a human inside of her and she feels even more panicked than usual and what if she can never get the balance of being a mother and focusing on her career right and-

But she can’t. Because they can’t tell anyone, no matter how much Amy yearns to share this joy with the people she cares about the most, and how much Jake wants to gleefully yell that he knocked his wife up at virtually everyone they pass on the street. They’re just not ready – in truth, _she_ isn’t ready for it to be official, real and an unavoidable, gargantuan force of change.

 Thinking the word ‘pregnant’ into existence is enough to cause a hurricane of raw emotion – but it’s a light breeze compared to actually saying out loud.

And yet, they both known Rosa won’t leave until she gets some sort of answer out of her. They’re at an impasse – an uncomfortable, awkward, silent impasse.

Rosa’s gaze is scrutinising and calculating and Amy genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if lasers started shooting from her eyes at any second – it’s something of a old western movie stand-off parody, except they’re waiting out who’s going to suck it up and actually start the conversation they should probably be having right about now, no matter how uncomfortable both of them might be.

After an excruciating eternity of roughly ten seconds, the other curly-haired and always slightly terrifying detective eventually sighs and resignedly slides down on the floor next to her, discarding whatever file she had to the side. Her expression (as usual), is unreadable as she clears her throat.

“So - are you going to tell me what’s causing...this...” - Rosa makes an awkward sweeping gesture in her direction, which she assumes can only be in reference to the whole aforementioned “hot mess” state that she’s currently wallowing in – “or am I going to have to interrogate it out of you?”

“Rosa, honestly. I’m fine.”

“You and I have a very different definition of what _‘fine’_ is, Santiago.” Amy just shrugs, so Rosa folds her arms and extends her legs across the floor like she’s prepared to be here all night, in true Diaz interrogation style. Amy’s thinking about laser eyes again before her friend’s expression unexpectedly softens.

“Do...you want to...talk about it?”

“I don’t know.” It’s an honest answer, to her credit. Despite everything they’ve been through, seeing Rosa try to talk about feelings can still be a little like imagining a turtle out its shell, and Amy’s really not prepared to honestly talk about her physical and emotional state right now.

She just wants her husband to bring her some chocolate and give her a slightly inappropriate-for-work and yet badly needed neck massage, and Rosa is not someone she’d willingly go to for either of those things.

She sighs again, averting her gaze from Amy’s face to seemingly anywhere in the room before she starts talking again.

“Look dude, talking about your feelings is gross. If you don’t want to talk about it and you just want to sit here and cry it all out, I get it. I’ll stay here as long as you need, then go file my arson case and pretend I didn’t see anything. But...I’m here for you. Even if your feelings are the grossest or lamest, if you wanna talk, I’ll listen. Okay?” She finally brings herself to look at Amy directly, dark irises electric with the most intense sincerity she’s ever seen.

Okay, yeah. She’s definitely going to start crying again.

“Wait, I didn’t mean –“ Rosa begins; but Amy is already hugging her, forcefully and tightly and awkwardly from the side, tears once again free-flowing. She smiles brightly and tenderly at the way Rosa only stiffens up for a second before equally as awkwardly leaning into it, patting Amy reassuringly on the shoulder with her free arm.

They stay like that for a good minute, Amy sniffling and basically doing the exact opposite of holding it together, but also feeling like its okay. Like nothing she can do or say will end the world if she doesn’t let it. It’s a refreshing change of pace.

This, of course, means the second she finally finds the strength to detach herself from her best friend; well, it just kind of comes spilling out.

“I’m pregnant.”

Rosa’s eyes suddenly become comically wide again, and Amy laughs for real this time, bright and shining and clear.

“Seriously?”

“Mmm-hmm. 9 weeks yesterday.”

“Nice.” Rosa smiles, a genuine, rare glowing Rosa smile, giving Amy a light shove of encouragement. When Amy breathes out, it somehow feels like a huge weight has lifted from her shoulders. She grins.

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I feel sick all the time, all my clothes are becoming too tight, I can’t drink caffeine or alcohol or shame smoke and I’m so stressed out and emotional that I cry at literally everything – but, y’know.”

“You’re having a baby.” Rosa says with this kind of awe, and Amy gets this warm glow in her chest.

“Yeah.” She smiles. “I’m having a baby.”

“That’s...a lot.”

“Yeah. Everything’s just...a lot, right now.” She sighs heavily, still weighted with something she’s been worried about for the last week or so.

 “We haven’t told anyone else yet, but – well, do you think it’s obvious?” She finally plucks up the courage to ask the question that’s been nagging at her mind ever since she started to have a little more trouble fitting in to her sergeant’s uniform, and the other detective pauses thoughtfully for a second to think about it.

“I don’t think so. You’re not...showing, if that’s what you’re so worried about.”

“No, no. We just... we didn’t want to tell everyone until...y’know. We were ready and it was the right time and...” She trails off, making a casual sweeping sort of gesture that somehow encapsulates her worst fears, and Rosa nods.

“I had my suspicions – you haven’t come out with us to Shaw’s in a long time, I haven’t seen you drink caffeine for a month, and you’ve been having even worse reactions to Charles’s disgusting food than usual. You don’t have to be a detective to start threading those symptoms together.”

“Damn. I thought we were doing a pretty good job of keeping it secret.” Amy sighs, folding her arms tightly across her chest, but Rosa just shrugs it off.

“You are. I saw all that but I still wasn’t sure. It just so happens that most of the people you’re trying to keep it secret from are highly trained NYPD detectives.”

Amy exhales a shaky half laugh and smiles, properly and genuinely, at the way her best friend looks at her with this kind of rare and precious softness, the corners of her mouth ever so slightly upturned into a smile.

“Also, I caught Jake on a baby name website last week and he panicked and told me he was brainstorming names for the monitor lizard you guys are thinking of adopting.”

“Oh, my god.”

“Yeah.” Rosa grins and Amy laughs at how wonderfully, amazingly stupid her husband can be, and her heart is actually warmed by the idea of Jake looking up baby names when he’s supposed to be working despite how irresponsible and stupid that is.

 Somehow, she already feels better that she has all day, and there’s not a bottle of tequila or a DVD copy of _The Holiday_ in sight. Another successful solve for the Sleuth Sisters (she’s still proud of that name and their corresponding cool-as-heck handshake, okay). 

“Is that...why you’re here? You’re worried about everyone knowing?” Rosa asks, a little more tentatively than usual now she understands Amy’s fragile state a little better. She makes a face.

“Maybe. Honestly, I don’t really know why I’m here. It’s just between this stupid patrol schedule and this presentation I have to give tomorrow and my squad evaluations and my pregnancy binder and my actual pregnancy – well, I don’t know if I can handle it, okay?”

“...And that freaks you out because normally it would be something you could do easily.” Rosa nods, understanding, and Amy gives her a weak smile, letting her hands drop and rest naturally, almost protectively on her stomach.

“Amy, you are two months pregnant. There’s no way you can get done what you’d usually be able to get done by yourself, because you’re busy being exhausted from growing another human being inside of you. It’s perfectly normal to not be able to take on your usual superhuman workload, you nerd.” Rosa says, with this familiar exasperated disbelief at Amy’s overworking brain.

“I know, I know. It’s just...frustrating. I’m already struggle to balance family with career and the baby isn’t even here yet. It only just became a foetus, Rosa. A foetus!”

“Okay, okay.” Rosa puts her hands out like she’s trying to steady a horse, clearly fully aware that Amy’s about five seconds away from a Level 3 Santiago Scale Freak Out, Pregnant Edition – something neither of them are fully prepared for.

“I don’t have an answer to the whole baby and career thing, but you don’t have to think about that right now – you need to focus on you.” Amy clearly doesn’t look convinced enough, so Rosa sighs and tries again.

“Tell Holt you’ve been sick recently and you don’t feel ready for the presentation, and he’ll 100% understand, dude. Get Jennings to help you with the patrol schedule seeing as that nerd loves paperwork almost as much as you do, and you know your officers better than another sergeant in New York, so those evaluations will be easy – you could probably motivate them to even do it themselves. Problem solved, you get to go home early and kick your feet up with a non-alcoholic cocktail.” She flawlessly monologues off a game plan with an exceptional ease that leaves Amy in a state of awe.

“Wow. I...erm, yeah. That’s super helpful, actually.” Rosa nods, like it’s nothing that she’s just solved basically the entirety of Amy’s current mental-breakdown-inducing stressors in a matter of seconds, and then softens.

“You’re going to be fine, Amy. Trust me. Once the whole squad knows we’ll be queuing up to help you guys out.” She, of course, knew that already – but it’s nice to hear it out loud, a promise engraved in the unbreakable, indestructible bond of the 99th precinct. She’s definitely less close to tears now, which is always a plus.

She always knew she could count on her parents to help out, of course, and maybe a couple of her brothers when they weren’t busy graduating med school or travelling the world or having kids of their own. But it’s nice to know, to have it spoken, that she’ll always be able to count on her other family, too. That there are so many people who are more than willing to ride her stupid emotional rollercoaster with her, even through the seemingly endless loops.

“Thanks, Rosa.”  
“Anytime.”

As if on cue, their little bonding moment is abruptly hijacked when Jake comes crashing into the evidence lock-up – chaotic and electric and as hectic as she’s come to expect in the many, many years she’s spent slowly falling more and more in love with him, his eyes slightly wild , extremely out of breath. Amy’s heart rate spikes again as she realises with a jumble of adoration, frustration and amusement that he ran all the way here just to take care of her.

Not for the first time, amazingly not even for the first time this week, she quickly realises that she really couldn’t have found a better person to share the rest of her life with. She whispers a silent thank you to the universe.

“Ames! I’m so sorry it took me so long” – he pauses to take another breath – “I had to run from that stupid cheese shop, and I know you said not to drop everything and immediately rush back here, so I obviously dropped everything and immediately rushed back here, ‘cause I knew that you were just downplaying it and if it’s a Code Blue that’s important and-“

It seems to be only then that he notices Rosa watching them both, who gives him a subtle nod, unable to completely keep the smile from her face. Frozen, his eyes flick repeatedly and chaotically from Rosa’s to hers, as if he’s trying to telepathically figure out whether he can talk about the baby or not.

He looks like a cartoon character and/or absolute, complete utter idiot, and Amy laughs melodically, deciding to put him out of his misery.

 “Jake, it’s okay – she knows.”

“...About the monitor lizard we’re planning to adopt?” He says slowly, and Amy and Rosa both roll their eyes simultaneously; neither of them bothering to poorly conceal their smiles anymore.  

In lieu of an answer, Rosa gets up from the floor and punches Jake in the shoulder, smiling wider than Amy thinks she’s ever seen her smile (except maybe when Alicia is around). It’s extremely heart-warming and only slightly unnerving – she doesn’t think she’s ever recorded so many genuine Rosa smiles in one day - except maybe on her and Jake’s wedding night, or when she oh-so casually mentioned over lunch a few months ago that she and Alicia were moving in together.

It’s different and unexpected and unusual in the best way possible – sharing this joy, especially with someone she cares about so much. Suddenly, she starts to understand why Jake wants so badly to yell it out into the street.

“Dude. I _know_. And for the record, I think you’re going to be a great...monitor lizard keeper.” Amy smiles as she sees the tension practically seep out of Jake’s frame and he relaxes a little, grins at Rosa, bright as the sun. She loves him _so much_.

“You really think?”

“I know. You two are going to kick ass at this. A thousand push ups.”  Rosa practically radiates sincerity as she places a hand on Jake’s shoulder. She doesn’t have to be a detective to know that she’s not the only one in the room who’s definitely on the verge of tearing up again. Jake, if possible, smiles even wider.

It’s all very disgustingly heart-warming and Amy thinks if it carries on much longer there’s a high chance that Hysterical Cry #6 could happen at any minute.

“Thanks, Diaz. We’re hugging now.”  
“No, we’re not.”

“Yes we are, c’mon, we’re having a moment.” Before she can object further, he hugs her tightly and Rosa hugs back - without hesitation or apprehension or any of it, just warmth. Amy takes the opportunity to wipe fresh tears away.

“Ames, you wanna get in on this?” Jake says after a minute, and she shakes her head.

“Nah, I’ve already had my one allocated Rosa hug today.”

“Just get in here, Santiago.” Rosa grumbles, slightly muffled, and Amy more than happily obliges, carefully lifting herself up and gladly sandwiching herself between two of her favourite people in the entire world.

Somehow, she can’t seem to remember what she was crying about.

“God, you guys’ lameness is infectious.” Rosa says after they break apart, quickly wiping her face with her sleeve like if she does it fast enough they won’t see. It doesn’t work.

“I’ve got to get out of here.”  
“...Haven’t you actually got an arson case to file?” Amy says, concerned, but she just shrugs it off.

“It can wait. You gonna be okay?” Rosa asks, and Amy pauses for a second, still hyperaware of the anxiety pushing down at the bottom of her stomach like lead and making her slightly dizzy. But then Jake squeezes her hand gently, anchoring her back down to reality, and she smiles. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“Good. If you need anything, ask, dummy.  I’m not massaging you, though. That’s Peralta’s job.” She adds as an afterthought, which makes Amy laugh.

“Ah, a job I do with zero experience, very little skill and far too much confidence. The Peralta speciality.” Rosa rolls her eyes and casually strides out of the evidence lock-up like she hasn’t just been given the life-changing news that the Peralta-Santiagos are _expecting_ \- like she hasn’t just spent the last fifteen minutes flawlessly consoling a highly emotional and mildly pregnant weeping police sergeant like it was nothing. Amy has really no idea what she would do without her.

She watches her go with a sense of awe and peace and finally, sweet contentment - before turning to Jake, who smiles _that_ soft smile that’s guaranteed to melt her like butter even when she’s not crazy hormonal and super horny. He squeezes her hand again, another secret coded language they’ve been speaking for almost a decade with remarkable ease.

“You sure you’re okay? I can go get chocolate if you need it, I know where Scully keeps his secret stash.”

“Mmm. I’m okay. Better now you’re here.” She says, wholeheartedly meaning it, and he carefully, tenderly hugs her, placing a chaste, appropriate-for-work kiss on the top of her head in a way that makes her think _this is it_. _They’re having a baby.  
_ Amy wants to yell it out to passing strangers in the street.

“We’re having a baby.” She opts for the more practical decision of whispering it gently with this sort of quiet, glowing glee - he matches it in the way he looks at her, in all her red-eyed, mascara ruined glory, like she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Hell yeah, we are.” He whispers back, grinning ecstatically, and her heart is New York lit up in Christmas lights.

She’s still a little stressed beyond belief about that patrol schedule, and the inevitably anxiety inducing email she has to send to Holt about putting off the presentation for a couple of days. She’s still behind on the pregnancy binder, and their monthly budgets, and every day the cherry sized piece of her heart that’s growing ever bigger in her stomach provides a whole new set of challenges she’d rather openly weep about that actually get on with overcoming.

But she has a dork of a husband who will willingly drop everything and sprint 20 blocks just to take care of her, and a terrifying best friend who can solve her greatest problems and quiet her worst fears without a bottle of tequila in sight. She has a family, one that is always growing bigger and bigger – a totally bizarre, mismatched, unique and strange family, but one that she grows more grateful for every single day.

So when Jake hurriedly whispers a _“love you”_ and kisses her softly before running back to tell Charles that the owner definitely broke into his own shop for the insurance money, and when Amy finally returns to her desk, smile on her face, to find Gary eagerly waiting to help her figure out the patrol schedule as Rosa so wisely predicted, she is no longer crying – she’s still nauseous and exhausted, sure, but happy, _so deliriously happy_ , and so deliriously excited to finally embrace hurricane of change.

She opens up her phone’s calendar, where she quickly types _“Announcement Day!”_ into the slot six days away, before sitting back in her chair, deciding what episodes of Serve and Protect they’re going to watch tonight, glowing smile on her face.

Then,  and only then, Amy just grips the bar in the carriage of her own little emotional rollercoaster before it can start up again – and she holds on tight, waiting patiently to enjoy the ride.  


**Author's Note:**

> thank you, as always really, to the lovely johanna for inspiring this fic, and to hannah for letting me use the approved rosa dealing with feeling method of tequila and nancy meyers - works every time!  
> thank you for reading! this is the longest thing i've ever written for b99 and it's a little different from what i'm used to writing so i hope you enjoy <3  
> come yell with me on tumblr @johnny_and_dora

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [this is life in color](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17410025) by [amyscascadingtabs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyscascadingtabs/pseuds/amyscascadingtabs)




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